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I’m Cindy Watrous, the blogger behind Healing Myself Today, and I’m taking over Christina’s liveblogging duties since she’s speaking on this panel. I apologize in advance if it’s not as thorough as she normally is, but at least she can fill in the blanks before this goes live on her blog. [Note from Christina: Conference re-entry is hard. Sorry it took me nearly a week to get this up! Here’s my reddit link for you.]
We’re talking Reddit for Bloggers with Christina Gleason, Lizz Porter, and Jacqueline Cromwell. Lizz is a community manager for Google.
Lizz asks how many people are on reddit, and how many people are afraid. We know there are many dark corners, and those are the ones on the news – but it is an amazing community, and lots of great things can be found.
Opening for questions – someone wants to know what it actually is. It’s a giant community on the Internet – there is a place for everyone on reddit – literally, everyone. The interface is intimidating, and not pretty. It hasn’t changed since it started, and it just turned 10. It’s basically just a giant message board.
Why do you want to be on reddit?
It’s a community, and bloggers should focus on that aspect.
- 850,000 subjects
- 169,000,000 monthly uniques
- 7.5 billion monthly pageviews
- 2% of all the content shared in the US is shared on Reddit.
Reddit Terminology
Karma: “Invisible” points, kind of like retweets, likes, etc. except you can be downvoted. The higher your karma is, the more you have participated, and the higher quality your content. Link karma – sharing a link, not sharing a self post.
Reddit Gold: real currency you can use to get additional features.
Reddit Hug: Overwhelming a website’s servers to the point where it crashes the site.
Self Post: a text post, rather than a link post.
Reddiquette: the etiquette you’re supposed to use, easily found on nearly every page on the site. The rules are really vague right now, but Reddit is trying to tighten them up to make it easier to follow.
Upvote/Downvote: qualifying of content
Inbox: Red/orange box; allows private messages, notifications – you’ll get notifications only when someone votes, not when they comment, unless you set it up that way.
Subreddit: topic – /r/blogging
Snoo – the reddit mascot
Reddit Tips
Be careful when you sign up. The name you pick is the name you pick. Choose wisely. If you close the account, no one else can ever use it again. If the account is deleted, it cannot ever, ever, be recovered. You will lose everything.
The reddit interface shows the default subs when you join. Most of us will want to unsubscribe to most, if not all of them, based on whether they are relevant, or offensive. Many are NSFW (not safe for work), so reddit carefully at work, or change default subs. You can customize your interface based on your interests.
We’re going over the interface at this point, and because the slides will be made available, and I can’t see the image well – it’s hard to keep up with where everything is. (I’m learning Reddit as I write this, too, sooo…) But, matching up the image with the glossary of terms can help make sense of it. If you have any questions, leave a comment, and Christina will totally help. [Yep, I totally will!]
Find your people and ditch the others. Get rid of the things that are not of interest to you, and find the subreddits that matter to you.
Reddit’s community can be very judgmental. They will pay attention to your karma. [Low karma doesn’t necessarily count against you if you’re new, but if you seem like you’re trolling, redditors will see that you only started that account to troll, and thing will go bad for you.]
Reddit strongly discourages the sharing of personal information. You cannot link to Facebook/Twitter, etc. as it could be used to ruin a reputation. It’s the only place Lizz goes to be anonymous, and uses a completely different handle that she doesn’t use anywhere else. She has a separate account for her blog. You can create many accounts…. or throwaway accounts, if necessary.
You can create an account without an email address… you just always have to remember your password, or you’ll never get to recover it.
Someone comments about how it doesn’t seem like a nice place, and Lizz says that can be said about any community, and Reddit is no different.
Every sub has its own rules on the sidebar – depending on the mods – you will have different rules to follow about posting, etc. Always read the sidebar before posting and commenting.
If you go to #food on twitter, does that matter to you as a food blogger with recipes? No, not really. Look at things like /r/mealprepsunday for meal prep. There are subs for everything. Don’t focus on the top level.
If you can’t find one, you can create one – once you’ve reach a certain level of activity and your account is at least six months old. Jacqueline says her husband has been on reddit 2 years longer than she has, and he still cannot create a subreddit.
Lizz tells the story of a man who went to a subreddit to complain about how his company had spent $10K (the majority of the capital available to the company) to go to a conference and boost his email list. He collected the data offline, and when he connected to the Internet, it was wiped. Someone found the company he worked for, found the email list sign up, and helped the man get way many more email addresses than he had collected initially. It’s not all bad!
There are lots of celeb redditors – Gates, Schwarzenegger, etc.
It’s a lot of effort at the start of Reddit, but it’s totally worth the effort to cut through the crap to find that gold.
Sharing on Reddit
Jacqueline invites everyone to join her subreddit. /r/nerdfamily
- 90/10 rule matters. Participate nine times to share once. Votes do not count – comments are what matter here.
- Share where you’re a regular – do not drop a link and disappear.
- Reddit can be a great place to crowdsource, but let them know that’s what you’re doing when you post.
- Disclose that it’s your content when you do share your own link.
- People can use your post history to find out if you’re posting a bunch of stuff from the same place, then go figure out if it’s your own domain.
Buzzfeed steals from Reddit all the time…
Subs that let you share your posts:
Reddit will respond in kind if you’re working hard to provide a resource – sharing other people’s stuff to create value. Your Pinterest isn’t all your pins, is it? Put stuff where it fits, where it’s yours or not.
If you upset the mods/community – you will get downvoted to the point where you can get banned. You can also be shadow banned, where you don’t know you are banned, but everything you submit goes to spam filter.
Remember, pay attention to the rules of each sub and follow them!
Robyn asks if the ROI is worth it because it’s so different from Pinterest, FB, Instagram, etc. Everyone on the panel says yes. Lizz says it’s a wonderful place to learn for your business. /r/socialmedia, for example.
If you don’t want to play on Reddit, at least put a Reddit share button on your blog to make it easier for people like Jacqueline who need to share. She needs to share to stay active and engaged there. Make it easy! It helps your traffic, too. You can pick the subreddit it shares to.
You can share in multiple subreddits, but you should let people know you’re cross-posting it. It’s a courtesy issue within the community. Pretty much anything goes in terms of sharing. [Use the term (x-post) in your titles when you cross-post.]
Lizz says her fav subs are:
Jacqueline:
- /r/tipofmytongue, great for trivia geeks, helps you remember the name of that song that goes like duh duh DUHHHH
- /r/glutenfree
- /r/askreddit
- /r/parenting
- /r/TodayILearned
Christina:
- /r/science (you can only post links to peer-reviewed journals here)
- /r/asksciencefiction (ask a question about the marvel universe, for instance, and you have to answer as though you were in universe)
- /r/chronicpain (you can find support for any health ailment, even though it’s not exactly a group you WANT to belong in)
- /r/wtfstockphotos
- /r/genealogy (she is a mod there)
[Thanks for typing this up, Cindy! I’m going to stop typing in brackets from here on down.]
We barely scratched the surface in our session, so I’m going to be writing some how-to posts about reddit for bloggers on Type-A Parent. I’ll try to remember to link to those from here when they go live! In the meantime, I did a quick video on Periscope about choosing your reddit username and uploaded it to YouTube. Have a look!
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
